


Vechnaya Pamyat

by mothi



Category: The Deer Hunter (1978)
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 03:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12855819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothi/pseuds/mothi
Summary: There are times, sometimes, when it’s almost like normal again.





	Vechnaya Pamyat

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty big warning for PTSD, drug use, self-harm, suicide, homophobia and panic attacks here, as well as the obvious discussions of violence and death, so please be careful if anything there will affect you negatively. Also a big ole spoiler warning for the film!

It had been a kiss, just once, in the fading light on the steps outside the cabin, when the sun had painted the sky a fiery red and Mike had been full of contentment and beer and Nick had leaned over and pressed his mouth clumsily against Mike’s.

It was brief, and soft, because Nick’s lips were as soft as any girl’s Mike had kissed even though he was constantly gnawing on them and they were chapped from the mountain wind. Mike would tell himself, afterwards, that he had not pulled away sooner because he was in shock; that the abruptness and unexpectedness of the kiss kept him frozen in place.

They had been sitting there for more than hour, watching the sun set, drinking beer from cans and trying to hit branches with stones. It was easy, being with Nick; much easier than it was being with the rest of them. That was why he had stayed outside long after Axel and John and Stan had turned in, trading the cold September air for the log fire and the beer cooler inside the cabin. He could still hear them, laughing and arguing and laughing again, as the sun sank below the line of the trees and burnt red in the darkening sky, and Nick turned to him in the comfortable silence and kissed him with his chapped and bitten lips and Mike did not pull away.

And then it was like a rush of panic and adrenaline and he wrenched his head away from Nick’s and barely registered the clatter and hiss as the half-empty beer can skidded across the deck, and he could hear the thumping of his heart in his ears and his own voice yelling faggot, fucking faggot, get the fuck away from me, and Nick had fallen back and was staring up at him with his pale eyes huge in his head and an expression on his face that made Mike sick to his stomach even as he thudded up the steps and into the cabin and slammed the door behind him.

The others were there, John and Stan and Axel, sitting around the fire with their mouths forming three perfect O’s and beer cans suspended halfway to their mouths. Mike would have found it funny if his stomach hadn’t been crushed at the base of his throat and his blood hadn’t been pulsing in his head and his own words hadn’t been echoing in his ears. He took a deep breath, feeling the sickness and guilt churning in his gut, and marched over and grabbed another beer and sat down next to Axel on the sagging couch without a word.

He didn’t hear Nick come in that night, even though they stayed up for hours afterwards.

It was different, for a while. The next time he saw Nick, in the morning afterwards, Mike had just come out of the shower. He had dressed and was towelling his hair dry as he came out into the kitchen, and there was Nick, sitting at the table, threading a new lace through his boots.

It was as though someone had kicked him hard in the stomach. The breath rushed out of his lungs and he stopped towelling his hair and, for a brief second, his eye caught Nick’s as Nick glanced up from the shoelaces. Then the moment was gone, and Nick was focused on his boots again, his large hands tugging carefully on the mud-softened leather.

“Stan and Axel went out,” he said. His voice was quiet and unhurried, almost as though nothing had happened, but there was something different in it that made Mike’s throat constrict painfully. “John’s on the steps.”

“Right,” Mike forced out. He knew Nick’s attention was gone from him now, completely focused on the task in his hands, but he waited, half hoping Nick would speak again, say anything that would loosen the tight knot in his chest.

Nick said nothing. In that way, it was exactly as it had always been. Nick was a man of few words, but he had always been prepared to spare a few more for Mike. Now, however, he remained silent and fixated on lacing his boots as Mike forced himself to walk past him to the cabin door and step out onto the deck in the same cool, sharp air that had bitten his skin the previous night. John was sitting quietly on the top step, face upturned into the mild wind, a plaid blanket draped over his shoulders. He turned his head slightly at the sound of the door closing, then turned back to the mountains, tugging the blanket a little closer around him.

“Thought you’d be out with the others,” he said, without looking away from the gently swaying trees. “Good day for hunting.”

Mike moved forwards and sat on the step beside John, folding his arms on his knees. The days were getting colder now that September was drawing to a close, the sun rising later, the first traces of frost, half melted in the morning sun, still glittering on the grass when they first set out in the dawn with their guns. Mike had always preferred hunting in the cold seasons. The deer were thinner and the air harsher than in the summer months, but Mike revelled in the crunch of the frosted leaves beneath his boots, the painful sting of the wind on his exposed face, the warmth and comfort of the cabin when they returned in the evenings, half frozen and red in the face with cold and most of the time without a prize but happy. Nick would always get the fire going, piling logs on and crouching in front of the lapping flames with his palms out, drunk with exhaustion and laughing as the others tried, with increasingly less success and increasingly more hilarity, to shove him out the way so they could warm their stiff fingers over the heat.

Mike thought he might throw up.

“So,” John said unexpectedly. Mike started slightly and looked around at him. John was not looking at him, but still gazing out at the distant mountains, brow slightly creased. Mike noticed for the first time the faint web of wrinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes; the line of his mouth, firm and yet soft at the same time, unusual in the absence of a smile.

“You and Nick,” John continued, and Mike felt his shoulders tauten. “Are you… You’re alright? The both of you?”

Mike stared at the ground between the cracks in the boards, watching the sparse layer of brown grass under the deck flutter slightly in the breeze. Then he said, endeavouring to keep his voice emotionless, “It was nothing. Nothing went on. We’re fine.”

“We all heard you, Mike,” John said, gripping his hands together in his lap. “You weren’t exactly keeping your –”

“I said it was nothing, alright?” Mike snapped. “I said it was fuckin’ nothing and it was fuckin’ nothing.”

John stayed quiet for a long minute, winding his hands slowly around one another and all the while serenely contemplating the snow-capped mountains as though he was trying to find a hidden message in one of them.

“That’s why they went out early,” he said abruptly. “Axel and Stan, I mean. They stayed up, y’know, last night. After you went to bed.” He dropped his gaze suddenly, frowning at his knotted hands. “They were talking about it.”

Mike felt a sudden, sick swoop in his stomach. “Talking about what?” He could hear his heartbeat in his temples. “Can’t a man have a goddamn argument with a guy without everyone talking –”

“They thought it was funny, alright?” John interrupted, at last meeting Mike’s eyes and sitting up straighter. “They thought it was fuckin’ hilarious. You and Nick. They were talking about what you’d been doing outside. Making stuff up.”

Mike said nothing. He stared out at the shuddering pines, trying to ignore John’s eyes, which were now fixed on him as staunchly as they had previously been avoiding him.

“Listen…” John said after a brief pause. “You didn’t – I mean – Did anything really happen with – you know?”

His heart was almost painful now, thudding a violent tattoo against his ribcage. “I’m not a fucking faggot, John.”

John withdrew slightly, with something like disappointment in his eyes. “I never said you were a faggot, I just asked –”

“Well, forget it, alright? Just leave it. We argued, nothing happened, and I’d be real happy if assholes would quit talkin’ about me behind my fuckin’ back.”

He got to his feet, shaking off the cold, and marched back into the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Nick had gone from the table, and Mike lingered only long enough in the room to tug his boots on and grab his jacket and gun before leaving the cabin, this time through the back door.

He didn’t see a single deer, nor did he see Stan or Axel, or even Nick, though Mike doubted Nick was out here at all. He returned to the cabin when the sky had already begun to darken, his hands waxy and rigid with cold and his stomach gnawing at itself with hunger. A thin stream of smoke was curling out of the chimney as he approached, gun on his back, treading carefully to avoid the jagged rocks that littered the ground.

Stan and Axel were very drunk. John was getting there as well, crushing an empty can under his foot as Mike came in and kicking it to join the rapidly expanding pile beside the fire. Nick was there too, sitting in an armchair in the corner. Mike could tell at a glance that he hadn’t been drinking. He was familiar with drunk Nick – perhaps too familiar – and the tight-set jaw and steady eyes of this Nick told him that his drunken counterpart had no plans to make an appearance. He glanced up as Mike shoved the door shut behind him, his expression unreadable, before flicking his eyes back to Stan, who seemed to be reaching the climax of a side-splitting anecdote.

“ - and I told her, ‘Ain’t redheads ‘sposed to be _fiery_? ‘Cause I ain’t seein’ much -’”

“Eyy, Mike!” boomed Axel, punching the air with his Budweiser and splattering beer into his hair. “You been out for fuckin’ hours, where the fuck -”

“Get Mike a beer!”

“I don’t want a beer,” Mike said, and was promptly hit in the stomach with the same can Axel had been brandishing seconds earlier.

“You asshole, I am not fuckin’ cleaning that up,” John said loudly.

“And I _told_ her,” Stan shrilled over the shouts, “‘Cause I ain’t seein’ -’”

“Mike, get a beer!”

“I just want somethin’ to eat, I don’t want -”

“You assholes ain’t even listenin’ to what I been fuckin’ saying!” Stan yelped, standing up and staggering a little against the mantelpiece. “If a guy’s tellin’ a fuckin’ story he expects his piece of shit friends to -”

“Christ, Stan, can you can it for two seconds?” Axel interrupted, fumbling a new can from its plastic case and trying unsuccessfully to pop the tab. “You tell this stupid fuckin’ redhead story every time we -”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘cause your stories are so much better?” Stan said, his voice rising excitedly. “Like the, the one about the blonde with wonky tits? Huh? ‘Cause I don’t think -”

Mike tuned out the bickering as he crossed past to the kitchen and began hunting in the cupboards for food. They always tried to keep the cabin stocked up so they didn’t have to drive all the way back to the town for groceries, but none of them were good at remembering to do it, with the result that all Mike uncovered was a tin of beans and a packet of pitta bread. A packet of _expired_ pitta bread. Mike didn’t even know pitta bread could expire.

There was a saucepan on the stove with what looked like pasta sauce inside, presumably the remains of the others’ supper. He lit the burner with a match - the gas was shit up here, always had been - and by the time he had doled a serving into a bowl, Stan’s voice had quietened. He carried the bowl back through and sat down next to John, leaving the space beside Nick empty.

“You get anything, Mike?” John asked as Mike dug in with his fork.

Mike shook his head, swallowed his pasta, wiped his mouth. “Nah, nothing. Real quiet out there.”

“We shoulda got Steve to come up,” Axel said. “He’s got the eye for spotting ‘em. Shame he’s such a fuckin’ pussy about hunting now.”

John made a noncommittal noise and took a swig of beer. Nick crossed his legs, ankle on knee, and said nothing. He didn’t look at Mike.

“Fuckin’ A,” Stan said, inconsequentially.

“You guys weren’t out long, then?” Mike asked, staring deliberately from John to Axel to Stan to avoid looking at Nick’s silence.

“Nah,” Axel shrugged, “Too cold. We stayed in to listen to Stan talk about his fuckin’ redhead for the millionth -”

“Hey!” Stan lurched to his feet again, swaying enthusiastically, “If you don’t wanna listen to my redhead story then I don’t never wanna listen to your blonde one, how about that?”

“Christ, Stan, give it a fuckin’ rest for once in your -”

“Everyone else likes my redhead story!” Stan said piercingly, flourishing his beer can at Axel. “You guys all like it, right?”

John gave a snort of laughter and leant back into the couch, wheezing. Stan looked agitatedly between each of them, his face turning red.

“Come on, you guys! Nick, come on, you like my redhead story, right?”

Mike looked up quickly, gripping the bowl tightly in both hands. Nick’s expression was distant. The can in his hand was untouched.

“I wish you’d quit goin’ on about it, Stan,” he said, tonelessly.

Stan stared at him for a few seconds, mouth half open, anger and humiliation battling on his face. He spun around to look at John, who was now laughing so hard his face was red, then Axel, who was grinning behind his Bud.

“Quit going -!” he said loudly, shiny with sweat in the low light. “So I’m not allowed to talk about what I want to talk about but you’re allowed to, to talk about whatever you want, huh?”

John was still breathless with laughter, his beer sliding steadily from his slack hand. Stan looked between them all, jumpy, his hands jerking into fists and dropping back to his sides.

“So that’s how it is, huh? That’s how it is?”

“Stan, calm the fuck down, no one’s saying -” Axel interjected, but Stan’s voice was suddenly much too loud as he shrilled, “And no one’s thought that maybe he doesn’t like my redhead story because he’s a fuckin’ faggot?”

The silence that followed was the loudest Mike had ever heard.

In the brief second it took for everyone to comprehend what Stan had said, Mike’s stomach dropped away, to be replaced with something heavy and writhing that made the pasta feel like maggots in his guts. The voice that broke the silence was John’s, saying, from a great distance, “Jesus, Stan, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”

On the other couch, miles away from Mike, Nick’s face had turned so white it was almost a skull in the firelight. Stan’s forehead was glossy with perspiration as he snapped, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Huh? So Mike’s allowed to call him a faggot but I’m -”

“I never called him that,” Mike’s voice said. His head felt light, his temples throbbing with blood. His hands were numb. “You got it wrong, I never -”

“Oh, bullshit, Mike, we all fuckin’ heard you!” Stan burst out. “‘Faggot, you fucking faggot’, you remember that, huh? ‘Cause I sure remember what I -”

“You’re going way over the fuckin’ line, Stan,” came Axel’s voice, from far away.

“ _I’m_ over the line!” Stan yelped. He looked faintly ridiculous, almost comical, swaying in front of the fire with a Budweiser in one hand and the other clenched into a fist at his side, his face flushed and his brow glistening with sweat. “And you, you don’t think Mike went over the fu - the fuckin’ line when him and Nick were, were, what, sucking each other off outside the -”

Nick stood up so smoothly that Stan jerked backwards, stumbling on the grate. He was tall, a good head taller than Stan, well-built, with strong hands and arms thick with muscle. In the firelight, he seemed suddenly monstrous, his face black with shadow as he stared down at the cowering form below him.

Then he smiled, and it was Nick again, and the shadows slid off his face like rainwater.

“I don’t like your redhead story because it’s shit and you’ve told it every night we been here, Stan.” He clapped Stan briefly on the shoulder, easy, casual. “And you can call me a faggot as much as you want, fine, but I ain’t the one who’s only been able to pick up one girl since we was up here last.” He glanced around at Mike, loose smile still hanging on his lips. “And a redhead at that, huh?”

And that was Nick, Mike realised, as John gave a relieved laugh and Axel drank his Bud and even Stan gave a reluctant grin. That was Nick, who couldn’t hold a grudge for more than twenty-four hours, who laughed with Stan as he told a story about a brunette this time, who rested his hand briefly on Mike’s shoulder as they finally dragged themselves away from the dying fire.

“The moon’s clear out tonight,” was all he said. His face was serene, white in the moonlight.

Later, when they sat alone on the steps again, sharing a cigarette that had almost burnt down to the filter, Mike leant briefly against Nick in the blue night.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

Nick did not move his gaze from the far-off peaks. In the dark, Mike thought he felt something warm brush his hand, a brief touch, like a reassurance.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

*             *             *

“Please, Nicky,” he says. “Come on, Nick. You gotta come home.”

He’s too late.

Nick’s been dead for days, weeks already. His wrist is still warm beneath his hand.

“ _Home_ , Nicky,” he says. He can feel Nick’s pulse jumping, a staccato flutter against his fingertips, like bird wings. “You remember the trees? You remember all the different ways of the trees?”

There are cracks in the death-mask, splinters falling away and revealing something underneath that’s raw and wet and soft. The crowd heaves.

“I –” Nick’s face is crumpling, drawing inwards, his eyes bright sharp hollows in the grey plain of his face.

“Remember that? You remember? Huh?” Mike says, his heart lurching across the table. “The mountains? You remember all that?”

The trembling pulse against his palm, Nick’s eyes, collapsing inwards, and the unsteady line of his mouth. A widening crack; a glint of teeth.

“One shot.”

“One shot! One shot!” It could be joy in his chest, or relief, or searing, sickening terror. Nick, in the trailer, wearing a dress shirt and a loose bow tie, shining his shoes with black polish, laughing. He holds Nick’s gaze hard, clutching at it, leaning in as close as he can across the table.

He dies with his mouth open. The smile on his teeth is all wrong. His lips stretch, and his hand moves, and he rips the heartbeat out from beneath Mike’s fingers and presses the forgotten gun against his head and fires.

A frenzy of noise, blurred motion, colours and shapes swelling and bursting. The sweet stink of sweat, soaking armpits and the backs of necks. The greasy crackle of notes passed between damp hands and shouts, voices rattling loud as gunfire, heavy with alien words on alien tongues.

The gun clatters to the table. His hands are rising to his face, sinking into the oily mats of hair beneath the red cloth, his face collapsing.

“One shot,” he’s saying. “One shot.”

“Một vòng khác!” bawls the little man with one dark eye. He lifts the gun.

“No!” Mike has half risen from his chair. He can taste bile in the back of his throat. Across the table, Nick is curling into himself like a dead insect, fingers ripping at his hair. “He’s done, he’s not doing any more, he’s done!”

“Ngồi xuống!” A bullet, flicked into the gun’s chamber. “Tiếp tục chơi!”

“I said he’s fucking _done_!” Mike roars, and he seizes Nick’s arms over the table, shaking him, dragging his hands down away from his face. “C’mon, Nicky, _please_ , Nick –”

The crowd is roaring, a seething, heaving mass, heavy with sweat and groping hands. The little man is screaming over them, both hands raised. Mike clutches Nick’s shoulders, trying not to look at the dark veins scraped up his forearms, the needle marks, the tendons standing out like wires on the backs of his convulsing hands. “Nick, Nicky, _Nick_ -”

There’s a sudden weight on his shoulder. The Frenchman’s face, pinched and yellow, warping dizzyingly in the light from the swinging lantern. His hand is gripping Mike’s arm tightly.

“I’ll help you get him out,” he says over the crushing noise. “Get his arms.”

Mike doesn’t stop to think. He forces his way around the table, shoving aside the dark faces, the business suits and ties, and seizes Nick’s shoulders with both hands. Nick is muttering something. His hands are splayed like pale spiders in hair dark with grease, his whole body shuddering, eyes staring blankly out of a white face. He doesn’t move.

“We’re going home, Nick,” Mike says, leaning his head down close, shaking him again. “I’m taking you home, right? We’re gonna see Linda again, but you gotta get up, Nicky, you gotta get up.”

Nick’s breath rattles in his throat like a dying man’s. The red headband is sodden, the colour of old blood.

“ _Please_ , Nicky,” Mike’s voice says. If he could have got to his knees in that filthy warehouse, pressed his bare skin against bloodied stone - “Please, please, get up, please, God, Nicky.”

The Frenchman has appeared on the other side. The little man with one dark eye shouts something, his hand snatching at the Frenchman’s jacket, and the Frenchman whips around, shouting words that are drowned in the tide of yelling and stamping and whistling that is suffocating the churning room.

“Nick,” Mike says. It falls from his lips like a prayer, like weeping. He presses his forehead against Nick’s, blocking his ears to the deafening crowd, squeezing his eyes tight shut, cradling Nick’s head in his hands. He can feel the heartbeat at his temples beneath the red cloth.

“Come home,” he says. “Come home.”

Nick’s expression does not change. His eyes are dead. His lips are moving, very slightly, mouthing words that don’t make it into the sweating yellow air.

“Just pull him!” the Frenchman shouts, reappearing abruptly on Nick’s other side. “Pull him down to the boat, I’ll come after -”

He turns back to the little man and Mike turns back to Nick. His eyes are blurry. The noise is making his ears ache. He takes Nick by the shoulders again and wrenches, hard, heaving him up from the table and looping his arm around his waist. Nick sags, a dead weight with the dregs of life remaining, his knees buckling. Walking home from the bar under an indigo sky, Stan and Steve and Axel and John ahead of them, shouting half-remembered songs with voices slurring with laughter, and Nick hanging off his shoulder, smelling of beer and cigarettes and warm skin.

“They’re shit,” Nick says. He’s laughing. “They’re absolute... _shit_ at - whatever they’re fuckin’ singing.”

“It’s, um,” says Mike. Nick’s got his arm around him too, even though he’s the one in a fairly constant state of falling over. “It’s. Um. Frankie Valli, right?”

Nick snorts before he starts laughing again. “I meant the song name, asshole. You asshole.”

“It’s the one - the one with - you’re laughing at me!”

“It’s the...the ‘I love you, baby’ one,” Nick says, “It’s _that_ one. Can’t Take My - fuck -”

“It’s not Can’t Take My Fuck, that’s definitely not it.”

Nick staggers against a shop wall, his face blurry with laughter. Mike staggers with him, his arm still hooked around Nick’s shoulders.

“Come on, Nicky,” Mike says. “We can do it. Come on. Just walk. Just walk.”

He gets him out the door. Through the back room, ignoring the surge of standing bodies, the hushed voices, the scrape of chairs clattering to the floor. No one moves to block his way.

Down the steps, into the tiny boat. The sound of the crowd has faded, dulled to a muffled roar that’s half drowned by the sharp, muted _boom_ s of explosions somewhere close by. Nick sways drunkenly, looking out at the flaming river, seeing nothing. Mike guides him onto one of the benches, fumbling in the dark, waiting for the flares of fire that light up the black water. In the distance, over the silhouetted rooftops, a mushroom cloud rises red against the night. It reminds Mike absurdly of the smoke from the cabin curling into the mountain sunsets back home.

They sit in the dark for what could be a minute, or an hour, or somewhere in between. Mike keeps his arm around Nick’s shoulders, feeling the warm weight of him in the blackness, the steady rise and fall of his ribs against Mike’s own.

He’s here, Mike says. He’s here. I’ve got him. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.

The door at the top of the steps slams open, ricochets off the wall with a bang. The Frenchman hurries down to the boat, scrambles in, seizes the oars. The kid who brought them here is gone.

“You take that one, quick,” the Frenchman says. His face is glistening. He doesn’t look at Mike as Mike takes the other oar, keeping his leg pressed against Nick’s.

They row, silently, downriver. There are others around them in boats of their own, families, children, a few men in uniform. A few of the buildings they pass are ablaze, smoke billowing into the sky, tongues of fire lapping at the choking air. Every few minutes an explosion rips apart the night. There are screams, wailing voices, pleading. The far-off rattle of gunfire.

“Go faster,” the Frenchman says. “I’ll get you to the embassy. This god damned city’s about to collapse.”

Nick hasn’t moved. Were it not for the slow movement of his chest, the occasional flutter of his eyelids, he could have been a corpse.

“They’ll get you on a helicopter quick if you have military ID,” says the Frenchman. He heaves at the oars, sweat beading in the creases of his brow. His gaze flickers over Nick, eyes tight and strained, lingering on the dark veins running up his arms. “Get that headband off him first, though. And cover his arms up.”

The streets are dead. A few trashcans are blazing, garbage strewn across the sidewalk, bottles and cans lying crushed in the gutter. The burnt-out shell of a car has been abandoned at the side of the road. Mike can hear a child crying from one of the buildings. Neon buzzes, spelling out half the letters of a takeaway sign, luminescent green searing lines into his eyes when he blinks.

He has his arm around Nick again. Nick is walking, slow steps, steady. His weight is so familiar that Mike almost feels he could be back in Clairton, coming home from the bar, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes -

In his right hand is Nick’s wallet. Nick’s dog tags are tucked behind the photo of Linda. CHEVOTAREVICH, NIKANOR A. 755-21-935. A+. ROC.

“Please,” he says to the woman behind a screen at the embassy. The Frenchman is gone. “He’s sick, I need to get him home.”

She’s the only English speaker there, but it still comes out stilted, clunky. She has to shout over the noise of the crowd as she holds up the dog tags. “His name is this?”

“Yes, that’s him, he’s Nikanor,” Mike says. Someone in the queue behind him knocks hard into his back. He holds on tight to Nick’s arm. “Please, he can’t stay here, he can’t cope with it. I just need to get him home.”

“You must wait,” the woman says. “Many people, they are trying to leave now. Less helicopters, not enough coming. You must wait.”

“He _can’t_ wait,” Mike shouts. At his side, Nick’s eyes are rimmed with white, his mouth half open, like an animal in the road. “He can’t fucking wait, he’s sick, he needs to go home, he -” His voice breaks.

The woman looks at the dog tags in her hand. She has papers strewn across her desk and bruised eyes. She looks at Nick, her face torn.

“I get you on a helicopter,” she says, after a silence. “Two hour, it will be here.”

They wait, standing against the wall beneath the flickering strip lighting, in the crush of people. The floor is peeling, strips of wood curling up, marked with dark stains and deep gouges. Mike holds onto Nick as he sinks down the wall, this shell of a man, this corpse with Nick’s face, and he doesn’t let go.

“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

They wait for the sound of helicopter blades. It feels like a dream. A woman is crying, screaming words Mike doesn’t understand. She’s holding a baby in her arms.

Nick sleeps, with his head resting on his collarbone. Mike checks his pulse every few minutes, pressing shaking fingers into the hollow of Nick’s neck, watching for breath. A man is holding a woman tight to his chest in the line opposite, stroking her hair mechanically with one hand. His fingers have left damp stains on the sheaf of crumpled papers clutched tight in his fist.

Mike wakes Nick at the clatter of the helicopter. He threads his fingers through Nick’s, pulls him gently to his feet, wraps his arm around him like they used to. The line surges forward in a short burst, a spray of people sprinting out across the roof towards the waiting helicopter. Far away, behind the black line of buildings hazy with smoke, a red glow is burning on the horizon.

“I said I’d get you home, Nicky,” Mike says, and he grips Nick’s hand tight. “I promised I’d get you back home. I ain’t leaving you behind.”

The sun, when it rises, sets the sky on fire.

*             *             *

“It’s too early for coffee, Steve, Jesus.”

“Look, Angela already made some, we got a whole pot. Look at this pot.”

“Real nice, Stevie. Great pot. Really nice.”

Steve grins and wheels his chair over to the cupboard to find mugs. “Have some orange juice then, asshole.”

Mike leans back in his chair and glances out the window, crossing his arms over his chest. There’s a television on in the next room; the sounds of a midday talk show are tinny through the thin wall.

Tupperware clatters from where Steve’s sitting, bent awkwardly double to reach the low cupboard. His face is slightly red with exertion when he says, without looking up, “So, you - you been at John’s since you been back? With the others?”

“Nah,” Mike says, letting his chair legs drop back to the floor. “Nah, I - you know. Been busy.”

Steve says nothing for a few moments, placing two mugs on the sideboard and manoeuvring his chair back around so he can open the fridge door. “John says you been down there on your own, a couple times.” He glances up at Mike as he places the milk carton in his lap with the mugs and wheels back over to the table. The low whine of his chair briefly drowns out the metallic laughter from the TV next door.

“Yeah, well. On my own, sure.” He pauses, jogs his leg, stares at the square of sky visible through the window. “I don’t wanna - you know, I don’t wanna hang out with them so much, right now. I’m not - it’s nothing, it’s just, you know, it’s not the same. It’s different from how it used to be.”

Steve’s watching him. He has big eyes, doe-like. The milk carton looks gaudy against the brown woollen blanket he has draped over his thighs.

“Especially -” Mike feels his throat tighten. “Especially when it’s just us four, at John’s. It don’t work so well when it’s just us four.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. He lifts the kettle with both hands and pours a stream of coffee into each of the mugs, pushing one across the table to Mike. “Jeez, sorry, it musta gone kinda cold. You can heat it up on the stove if you want.”

“Nah, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to the muffled voices from the TV. It’s a nice silence, comfortable, different from the ones Mike’s been sharing all too often with Stan and Axel and John. There’s things they don’t talk about now. Things they used to talk about that hover at the edges of conversations, in the tight line of John’s mouth, in Stan’s darting eyes, Axel’s clenched hands. Steve is quiet by default. Silence comes as naturally to him as fog to the mountains.

“Angela,” Mike says suddenly, and Steve looks up from his coffee, startled. “How’s Angela? And Anton? They’re good?”

“They’re - they’re good, Mike, yeah,” Steve says, his brow slightly furrowed. “Angela’s just next door, she might be asleep, but she - she was askin’ after you. Wanted to know how you were doing, y’know. Wanted to see you. She told me to let her know when you got here but she’s, y’know, she’s pretty tired at the moment, looking after Anton and all that. Might wake her up later, before you go.”

He wraps his fingers around the mug, chewing on his lip. Mike takes a gulp of coffee to have something to do with his hands. It’s lukewarm, but tastes better than the freeze-dried crap they have at the trailer. Nick was the one who always bought good coffee, not Mike.

“You know we named him after Angela’s old man, right?” Steve says, fiddling with the ceramic handle. “Anton. Her pa died a couple years ago so we decided - before I left - Anton’s a pretty good name.”

“Yeah?” Mike says. “Anton Pushkov, huh?” He drinks his coffee; smacks his lips. “It’s a real good name, Steve.”

Steve smiles. His eyes are focused on a point just above Mike’s ear. “Angela liked it. Her pa was a good guy.”

“He was at the factory, right? Left a few years after we started there?”

“Yeah, he worked in DeLancy’s for a while after. I didn’t know him all that well. Died before I met Angela.”

There’s another silence. Mike stares at the wall, at the framed photograph of the wedding propped on the mantelpiece, at his shaking hands. He wants a beer.

“How’re you doing, Mike?” says Steve abruptly. “I mean, how are you _actually_ doing? ‘Cause I know you ain’t talking to the others about it, about anything. And you got Linda but she hasn’t -” He stops, rubs his hand up and down the blanket on his thighs.

“I’m okay,” Mike says. “I’m doing okay. Linda’s good about it.”

“I’m ain’t saying she’s not good about it, she just hasn’t - it’s not the same, as with us. We both been there. You gotta talk to someone who’s been there.”

“I don’t need to talk,” Mike says shortly. He sets the coffee cup down on the table and hears it rattle against the wood with the force of his shakes. He can tell Steve notices. “I said I’m okay, I’m doing good. I get - well, obviously, I get nightmares, I got the shakes all the fuckin’ time, but that’s - it’s normal, you get what I’m saying? I can handle it.”

Steve chews on his lip. There’s a pause; then: “Nick’s still not out?”

There’s another photograph on the mantelpiece, next to the wedding picture, of a man in overalls with his arm around a smiling woman. Anton senior, perhaps. Mike recognises the factory in the background.

“Nah,” he says. “Nah, they’re keeping him in.”

He clenches his hands suddenly, trying to suppress the shivers. It’s much too cold for April. “They don’t think he can handle being out yet. They had to get him off the heroin first, that took a while. He was in that special ward until last month. And he kept trying to kill himself.”

He hadn’t meant to say it. Out loud the words seem naked, coarse, unseemly. He grips his hands together and stares at the wall as he carries on, blindly, “I visited him every day, took him his favourite shirts, his old clothes, ‘cause they had him in those patient gowns even though he’s long-term, ‘n I found his favourite book, brought that to give him. He was - he’s gettin’ better now, he’s loads better, but he was real bad. For months. They had to watch him all the time ‘cause he tried to slit his wrists with a butter knife. There was a loud noise or somethin’, someone dropping something, I don’t know. He thought he was back in Saigon. He thinks it’s guns, all the time. Gunshots. He didn’t even know his name. I had to tell him his own fucking name ‘cause he didn’t have a fucking clue, Christ. ‘Who am I?’ I said, ‘what’s my name? Tell me who I am’. He didn’t know. Christ, if I ever thought - if I ever -”

He sucks in a breath, runs his hands down his face. Christ, he wants a beer.

Steve waits a moment before he speaks, lets Mike drag himself back, before he says, very softly, “I’ve seen him, you know. I went and saw him a few weeks ago. He’s like I was, before you got me out, remember? He’s just like I was. And look at me now, right?” He spreads his arms in a gesture of grand reveal. “I’m good as new. Without the legs, obviously, but -”

Mike gives a wet snort and looks up at Steve, rubbing the moisture from his eyes. Steve’s got something that’s almost a smile on his face, something tentative, and kind, but firm.

“It’s gonna be hard,” he says, “when he gets out. It won’t be like it was. None of us are - we’re different now, from how we used to be. But we’re here. We made it.” His voice trembles a little, and he clutches the mug tightly. “We all went, the three of us, and we all came back. We coulda died in ‘Nam, easy, we coulda been shot or blown up or - or -” A deep breath. “But we’re here, now. Nick’s here. We’re gonna look after him, right? We’re gonna take care of him.”

Mike’s chest feels tight. He doesn’t look at Steve.

“ _All_ of us,” Steve says forcefully. His chair creaks as he leans across the table. “Not just you. Not just you on your own, Mike. It’s never gonna be just you.”

“Yeah.” The word comes out strangled, forced past the lump in his throat. Steve reaches across the table and grips Mike’s shoulder and holds on tight. Mike notices, for the first time, that Steve’s hands are shaking too, just slightly.

“Nick’s tough,” says Steve. He meets Mike’s eye, squeezes his shoulder gently. “He’s gonna pull through. He’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I know,” says Mike. “Yeah. I know.”

*             *             *

There are times, sometimes, when it’s almost like normal again.

A cold morning in late November, when the windows are opaque with frost around the frames, and the trailer is still dark except for the flickering yellow kitchen light that’s always left on, and Mike rolls off the couch with the blankets tangled around his legs to see the blurred outline of Nick standing on the porch in the half-darkness.

The door is a little stiff as he cracks it open and closes it carefully behind him. He can see a thin layer of ice riming the cold metal handle, though he knows the real reason for the stiffness is because the door hasn’t been oiled since before they left and rust is starting to form on the screws. He doubts Linda ever thought about oiling it herself while they were gone. He’s not even sure where they keep the oil, even though he’s lived in the trailer for a good few years. Even though he’s oiled this exact door before, with a yellow cloth Nick found under the sink and a lubricant bottle so old the label was black with dirt.

Nick is leaning against the fretwork railing, his shirt slightly open at the throat, holding a chipped mug in his left hand. His feet are bare and red with cold. He turns his head a little as Mike closes the door behind him.

“Hey,” Mike says.

“Hey,” Nick replies.

Nick’s voice is a little hoarse, but his eyes are clear and steady despite the purple shadows that are bruised all the way to his cheekbones and there’s something that’s almost a smile on his lips. Mike smiles in return and moves over to stand beside him, resting his elbows on the railing in imitation.

The town hasn’t woken up yet. The sky behind the black monuments of the factory towers is a deep blue, smeared at the horizon with a pale, fragile pink, as though the sun isn’t sure whether to rise today. The faint pinpricks of stars are still visible overhead. The factory doesn’t open until seven. The silence is, for once, unbroken, except for the clear-throated voice of a Carolina wren in the tree behind the trailer.

They stand in silence for a long time, watching the pink slowly seep up the sky like a wine stain, as the blue lightens to indigo, then to violet, then to pink shot with orange. There are a few clouds streaked across the sky now, thin and ragged and rosy on the underside as though they had been dipped in paint.

Then, with a small exhale, Nick straightens and says, very softly, “There.”

There it was, a sliver of white on the horizon emerging into the brilliant orange glow. Mike watches it for a few minutes, as the strip of white broadens to a band of yellow, an arc, a circle that hovers weak and cold in the rapidly lightening sky. Then he turns to Nick, and nudges his bare foot with one of his own.

“C’mon. Inside, it’s fuckin’ freezing out here.”

Nick stays where he is, leaning on the railing with the untouched coffee still held loosely in his hand. His eyes are fixed on the rising sun, and his expression – calm certainty mixed with contentment, lips parted slightly and eyes bright – is so reminiscent of the old Nick that Mike feels the breath rush out of his lungs and he has to lean on the doorframe to keep from staggering.

The movement catches Nick’s eye and he looks around, eyes still slightly glazed but inquiring. Mike fancies he can see the fiery palette of dawn painted across his pale eyes.  “Inside?”

“Yeah,” Mike forces out. He takes a deep breath, blinking the image out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s – I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”

Nick stares at him for a long moment, lips forming vague shapes, before his brow furrows and he shifts on the railing, glancing down at his own feet.

“Ow,” he says, without inflection. “Mike, my feet are freezing off.”

Mike gives a snort of half amusement, half relief and pokes at Nick’s foot with his own bare toes. Nick laughs in protest and tries to step on him, but Mike pulls his foot away and catches him playfully by the arm to guide him into the trailer. Nick’s arm gives a barely perceptible spasm in his grip, but he’s still got something that’s almost a grin on his face as Mike shuts the door behind them and they head into the tiny kitchen. Everything is quiet, and the door to Linda’s room is shut. Mike fills the kettle from the sink and puts it on to boil, leaning briefly on the counter to peer out at the track outside. The silence that had rested over the town like a blanket was being broken by occasional sounds of the early morning: the muffled sputter of a car engine; something that could have been a distant voice, calling out into the stillness; the throaty rumble of the factory starting up for the day. In previous years that had been his wakeup call, as clear and stolidly dependable as the tolling of the church bell. Now it was a reminder of a different person who had slept on the same sagging couch he had risen from that morning, and had driven an old Cadillac to the metalworks, and taken his gun out into the mountains to hunt deer. Another Michael Vronsky, who had left Pennsylvania with two others and come back to Pennsylvania alone.

If he focuses hard enough, busies himself with the coffee and sees Nick only out of the corner of his eye, a vague shape in red flannel sitting at the kitchen table, he can convince himself that nothing has changed.

He looks over at Nick, tries not to focus on the hollow quality of his face, the blank eyes, and imagines it’s a normal day. A work day. They’ll be heading down to the factory soon, in the Cadillac because Nick keeps forgetting to service his truck even though the two back tires are flat and the heater’s shot. They’ll drop by Steve’s to pick him up on the way, hail Axel and Stan at the gates. Nick brings coffee in a thermos and drinks it cold because that’s what Nick does. Because Nick’s fucking _weird_.

He must have grinned, or made some sound, because Nick goes, “What?”

He glances round at him. Nick’s mouth is tugging up at the corners. “What what?”

“You were laughing about something.”

“Nah, I wasn’t.”

“You were,” Nick says. His voice is slightly hoarse. His smile widens, just a little.

“I was laughing at you, if you really wanna know,” Mike says. “I was laughing at you drinking cold coffee because you couldn’t never get the lid on your thermos.”

Nick stares at him. Then he leans back in his chair and he grins, and Mike grins back, and he thinks, yeah. We’re okay. We’re okay. We made it. We’re gonna be fine.

It never lasts, though. It never fucking lasts.

There’s other times when it’s as far from normal as it could possibly be.

It’s a Tuesday, January, and Mike is kneeling on the sidewalk on the high street with his hands gripping the shoulders of Nick’s coat and a crowd congealing around them, and Nick is staring straight at Mike but his eyes aren’t seeing anything at all and his mouth is open and there’s a choking sound coming from it, like a man drowning, dying.

“Nicky,” Mike is saying, because it’s all he can say. “I’ve got you, Nicky. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

The crowd murmurs and throbs.

“That’s the Chevotarevich boy, poor soul –”

“– in Heaven, it’s a crime, it really is –”

Nick’s eyes are fixed on the ghost over Mike’s shoulder, perhaps a gun, a bomb. A man.

“Can we have some space, please?” Mike’s voice says. It sounds ragged, thin, like it’s coming out through a cheese grater. A stupid image. He clings to it. “Just – he needs some space to breathe –”

There’s movement behind him, an apologetic hum, a woman’s voice saying “Everyone move along now, give the man some space”, but he holds on tight to Nick’s shoulders and ignores the grey buzz that’s swelling behind him. The stone beneath his knees is freezing. He can feel the cold seeping up his legs like water.

He had been fine, this morning. Almost normal. They had walked into town for milk and bread while Linda was at work, and they had talked about Elvis and Steve and the factory and Nick had laughed. Smiled. Talked about Linda. For a few hours, the Nick that had blown his brains out in a wooden hut in Vietnam had been at Mike’s side.

“Hold on tight to his hand, now,” said a voice. A lady with greying hair and a blue headscarf, kneeling on the sidewalk next to him. “My papa used to get this way sometimes. Hold his hand, now.”

Nick’s face is frozen, blown open. The colour of dirty snow. Eyes sunk so far into his head they look like twin tunnels bored into his skull.

Mike drops his hands down Nick’s arms and grasps his hands tight. He can feel the bones rattling all the way up his arm, the muscles taut as wire cables, his skin cold and peeled.

The woman is saying something. Her voice sounds muffled, like it’s coming through a badly-tuned radio.

“– er him, _molodój_?”

Nick’s hands are flexing and twisting, warped into claws of rigor mortis that scratch at Mike’s fingers.

“I – sorry, I –”

“Was it a loud noise? My papa always had his triggers.” She’s still kneeling on the sidewalk next to him. Her handbag is slightly open and Mike can see a pair of blue leather gloves folded up inside.

“It w – there was a, a car backfiring or – a door, door slamming, and he –”

– collapsed as though he’d been shot. A sudden eruption of sound, a deafening _bang_ from a few streets over, and Nick was dead on the ground in Clairton, Pennsylvania. He had been laughing. He died with his mouth open.

A hand on his arm. The woman is closer, bare fingers standing out white against his coat. Her eyes are soft and firm at the same time. “Let me. You’re shaking.”

“You didn’t used to shake,” says Nick.

“I didn’t used to be a fuckin’ war vet, did I?” is what Mike wants to say. What he really says is, “Yeah, well. I do now.”

Nick nods. His tongue passes along his upper lip. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded, eating cornflakes one by one with his fingers.

“Nicky, you heard of a thing called a spoon?” Mike says.

“A sp – a what?”

“ _Spoon_ , you dumbass.” Nick’s laughing. Mike throws a tea towel at him.

“ – is hand, _molodój_.”

The woman’s fingers are steady on his arm. Mike forces his hand to uncurl, drawing away from Nick and letting the woman take his place. He leans against the wall of the boarded-up shop they’re crouching beneath and presses his face into his knees, breathing in the stiff wool and its smell of cigarettes and wax polish.

Nick, on a Sunday evening, December, in a woollen sweater with strings of coloured tissue paper in his hair, crushed into the corner made by the wall and the dresser.

Ten minutes ago the kitchen had been rowdy, swollen with laughter and warm bodies and cloudy with the smell of food. Now it was silent. Just Mike, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out across the cold tiles, with one hand threaded into Nick’s trembling fingers.

“God, Mike,” says Nick into the heavy room. Mike hears him suck in a breath that shakes in his lungs. “I’m so fucked up. God, I’m so fucked up.”

“You’re not fucked up,” Mike says, and he grips Nick’s hand tight and shifts around so their legs are pressed against each other. “Don’t talk that way, alright? You’re getting better, that’s all. It’s gotta be bad first. It’s gotta be bad so it can be good.”

Nick’s eyes are bright shards in the yellows and reds cast by the colourful lampshade over the kitchen light. It’s a new find, one of Linda’s: a farmer leading a row of oxen through a field of ochre, stitched in black thread.

“You ain’t any more fucked up than me, right?” Mike says, sitting up further and shaking Nick’s arm a little. “Look at my fuckin’ shakes.” He lifts his right hand, holding it out in front of him. The thick light makes the shuddering look blurred, as though it’s been smudged around the edges. “Did I used to do that before? Huh? We’re all fucked up. Steve’s got no fuckin’ legs, Nicky. We ain’t leaving you behind ‘cause you zone out sometimes, okay?”

Nick’s staring at his hand. He’s still staring when his face falls in on itself and a sob rips itself from his chest.

“C’mere,” is what Mike says, and Nick buries himself in his arms. Mike holds on tight, fisting one of his hands in Nick’s hair, rubbing the other up and down his back as Nick cries and cries on the cold kitchen floor.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” he says quietly into Nick’s sweater. “I didn’t then and I won’t now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“Mike?”

It’s the woman again. She’s holding his shoulder gently, guiding him away from the wall. Behind her, Nick is sitting upright, his head cradled in his hands, taking rattling breaths that smoke in the freezing air.

“He told me your name,” the woman says. “He’s doing better now. I think you should take him home.”

That night, they sit on the couch with Linda until late, watching bad tapes that they found in a cupboard, laughing at the hammy acting and the stilted dialogue. It’s warm in the dark, and when Nick drops off with his legs curled around Linda’s back and his head against Mike’s shoulder, he snags a blanket from the carpet and covers all three of them and doesn’t bother to relocate to his bed. Mike keeps his arm around Nick until he falls asleep and he doesn’t let go.

*             *             *

They go into the mountains after the winter.

“It’s not for the deer this time,” Mike says, in the quiet of the bar, his hands wrapped around a beer and the eyes of Stan, John and Axel boring into his head. “It’s – you know, I ain’t bothered by that no more, it’s not about the deer. Nick’s gotta see the mountains again, the trees. So no guns, right? I’m saying no guns.”

He drinks quickly, trying to occupy his hands, trying not to look at the others who have shot uncertain glances at one another in the brief pause.

Stan speaks first, shrill and nervous and trying not to show it. “So, what, it’s a – it’s a fuckin’ stroll in the mountains? What’s – what’s the point of drivin’ all the way up into the mountains just to have a, a, a,” – he fumbles for words, eyes searching for allies in the other two – “a – _girl scout_ hike without even any guns? Come on, Mike, there’s no fun in that, come on.”

“It’s my car,” Mike says, staring at Stan, whose forehead is shiny with perspiration in the low ceiling lights. “It’s my car, I make the rules. If you don’t wanna come, I’m not dragging –”

“But I want to shoot a deer!” Stan says, lurching forwards in his seat. “I shot one last time, you saw me. You’ve always taken them first when we went before but I’m gonna get one this time, I’m telling you I am, and Nick –”

“You don’t know a thing,” Mike says, “You don’t know a fuckin’ thing. If you want to go and shoot your fuckin’ deer then you can do it in your own fuckin’ time and in your own fuckin’ car, alright?”

Stan makes to speak again, but Mike cuts across him, his patience shattering like a blown fuse. “Alright, fine, you bring your fuckin’ gun, Stan, that’s fine. And then when Nick gets hold of it and blows his head off because he thinks he’s back in Saigon again, that’ll be fuckin’ fine too, right? Because you got to shoot your _fucking_ deer.”

Stan has leaned back in his chair, his mouth hanging slightly open, an expression of mingled horror and defensiveness on his face, but Mike ploughs on. “You know he can’t even shave by himself, right? I’ve gotta do it for him in case he slits his goddamn throat. We’ve got all the knives in the house locked up in a box so he can’t get at them. We don’t even have any fuckin’ potato peelers anymore. But guns? Nah, they’re fine, he’ll be perfectly happy ‘round a load of guns, what a fuckin’ magnificent trip that’s gonna be!”

His chair makes a sound like shearing metal as he shoves it back and stands up. The others are completely silent, staring at him with eyes blown wide. Stan looks as though he’s been punched. It’s a cold silence and it drags at Mike’s stomach as he picks up his beer from the table and drains the last of it. It’s warm and tastes worse than he remembers.

“I’m driving up tomorrow morning,” he says, and his voice seems to rattle in the hollow room like a ball in a cup. “If you’re coming, be there for five.”

He leaves. The next morning, as he’s loading up the car in the chilly spring darkness, they arrive, all three of them. Nobody speaks of the day before, and it’s only just gone ten past when Stan breaks into a whooping laugh as Mike shuts John in the trunk before promptly putting his whole foot into an ankle-deep puddle. The roars of laughter follow him into the trailer as he searches for a new pair of boots, and for once Mike doesn’t mind when he emerges, still irritable, with Mike’s own spares already laced up.

It’s almost half past when Mike goes back inside to find Nick. He’s sitting in the kitchen, concentrating very intently on fixing the straps of his bag. Linda is leaning against the counter. She comes out with them as they pack the last bags into the trunk and the others begin piling into the car, her arms folded around herself. She’s wearing a brown woollen sweater that Mike recognises as Nick’s.

“Be safe, alright?” she says, encasing Mike in a quick hug. “Look – look after him.”

She turns to Nick, who is looking out at the factory, running his tongue over his teeth and winding his hands together. He starts slightly when Linda touches his arm, but wraps his arms slowly around her as she hugs him tightly. It’s a few seconds after she releases him that he tilts his head down to look at her face, and takes it gently in gloved hands.

“What’re you crying for?” he says, running his thumbs across her cheekbones, and Mike feels something in his chest knot tightly. “You don’t gotta cry, Linda.”

She ducks her head, raises it, ducks it again. Her smile is watery and tear-stained as she puts her own hand up to cover Nick’s and a sound like a sob is torn from her mouth.

“Hey,” Nick says, and he hugs her close again. Linda makes another tearing sound and buries her face in his shoulder, her hands clawed and trembling in the back of his jacket. From over her head, Mike can see Nick’s eyes, pale and dazed and sunken with shadows, staring at a fixed spot on the road. For a brief instant Mike sees the face of a deer caught off guard by a bullet, past the stage of white-eyed panic and staggering with exhaustion, flecked with foam and blood and no longer able to run, and he crosses quickly to Linda and lays his hand on her shoulder.

“C’mon, Linda, we’re gonna be fine. I’ll take good care of him.” He glances at Nick, shoots him a half smile. Nick tilts his head back, gives a tired nod, his mouth curling upwards slightly. Mike figures Nick doesn’t have long before complete exhaustion hits him, and claps him lightly on the shoulder, guiding him in the direction of the car. He gets Nick strapped into the front seat and ducks up over the roof to raise a hand to Linda, still standing by the door, hands burrowed into the soft wool of Nick’s sweater. She gives a damp smile and lifts her hand in return as Mike buckles himself in and starts the engine, and as they start off down the road in the first weak light of dawn, he sees her wipe her face with her sleeves in the clouded wing mirror.

The drive up is strange. Quiet. Nick sleeps most of the way, head resting against the window, waking only to stare blearily at Mike when the others get out to piss before dropping back off again. After a while John starts humming along to something Mike thinks might be from the forties and Axel joins in with gusto, both of them keeping their voices to a stage whisper to avoid waking Nick, still asleep in the front seat. The air gets clearer as the road winds higher, the crisp sharpness of spring catching in their lungs as Mike rolls down the window to relieve the stuffy warmth of the car. It’s only when they’re within hailing distance of their usual parking spot that Nick wakes again, jerking his head up from where it’s been slumped against the glass and looking around confusedly.

“Hey, sunshine,” Mike says, reaching out his right hand and resting it reassuringly on Nick’s leg. “We’re almost there. You been dead to the world the whole way up.”

Nick makes a vague noise of surprise, straightening in his seat to peer out the window at the backdrop of mountains rising unevenly beyond the wide band of pines.

“Mornin’, Nick,” John calls from the back. “You got your beauty sleep?”

“Guess you skipped yours,” Nick says, after a slight hesitation. John laughs, pats him briefly on the shoulder. They’re trying it out, this human contact thing. Gradual acclimatisation, according to the hospital. Stopping being so goddamn jumpy, according to Nick.

Mike pulls into their spot behind a crooked pine and there’s a chorus of grunts and sighs from the back as the others get out the car and stretch the stiffness from their limbs, peering around at the familiar view. Nick doesn’t move at first, still staring out the window, his brow slightly furrowed.

“Hey,” Mike says softly.

Nick looks around, smiles faintly. “Hey.”

Mike reaches his hand out and lets it lie on Nick’s shoulder. He seems to be spending a lot of time lately with his hand resting reassuringly on some part of Nick. He’s not sure whether the reassurance is for Nick’s benefit or his own.

“You wanna get out?” he says, after a moment. Nick stares up at the roof of the car, running his tongue across his bottom lip, and nods, once. Mike claps him on the shoulder where his hand had been resting and opens his own door, stepping out onto cool stone and breathing deeply the scent of pine needles and earth and smoke. It feels good to be here. To feel the sun on his face, hear the gentle piping song of a Warbler in one of the nearby trees, the laughter of the others as they drag bags and coats out the trunk. The mountains haven’t changed one bit.

By the time he looks back to the car, Nick has climbed out and is standing by the side of the road, staring out at the valley. He’s got his back to them, and Mike realises, with a sudden, sickening lurch in his stomach, that he’s standing on the edge of a sheer drop down to the rocks at the edge of the lake. The image that springs into his head, of a broken body lying spread eagled in the shallow waters fifty meters below, is enough to make him move quickly across the road and stop just at the edge of Nick’s field of vision.

Don’t startle it. Keep out of sight. Approach from downwind. One clean shot.

“Nicky?”

Nick turns, and Mike sees the tears spilling from his eyes, his heaving chest, hears his breath catching and tearing in his throat.

“I never -” Nick says, and his voice is jagged and cracked, “I never - thought -”

Mike crosses to Nick’s side in one stride, wraps his arms around him, and tugs him close. He can feel him shaking through the thick woollen jacket.

“I know,” he says, and he holds Nick tight and he doesn’t goddamn let go. “I know.”

*             *             *

The day they bury Nick is one of the coldest of the year.

It feels as though spring was yesterday, as though if Mike could have gone back just one day he would have been able to feel the sun on his face, the warmth and light, the breeze carrying the smell of grass and new flowers. It feels as though if he could shut his eyes tight enough, close out the rest of the world, Nick would be sitting beside him when he opened them again, watching the sunrise with his bare feet and his eyes filled with wonder.

But his eyes are open now, and the ground is cold and hard as frozen iron, and the black coffin is being lowered jerkily into the black earth. There’s a priest standing at the head of the grave, black-robed, face downturned, swinging his censer in a gentle arc over the place where the coffin rests. He should be in white. The color seems to flicker before Mike’s eyes and he squeezes them shut, clenching his fists in his pockets.

The walk back to the bar seems to pass in an instant. He doesn’t even remember taking a last look at Nick’s coffin before he’s sitting at John’s polished wooden table with a coffee mug in his hand, Linda on his right, Steve on his left. He’s not in his wheelchair. The noises from outside sound strange, unnatural, not the usual rumble of the factory or the occasional distant roar of a car engine. It sounds like trees, trees in a gentle wind, though Mike knows there are no trees within spitting distance of John’s bar because Nick points out every goddamn tree in the area when they haven’t been up to the cabin in a while and he’s always brought up short when they get to this part of town.

“They keep cutting them down, Mike,” Nick says. “I’m telling you, it’s gonna come back and bite them in the ass someday.”

“The trees are gonna bite them in the ass?” Mike says, raising his eyebrows.

“Maybe if the trees actually did bite them in the ass they’d be more fuckin’ prepared to stop cutting ‘em all down,” Nick drawls. He’s swinging his coat in his hand, dragging his fingers across the bark of each tree they pass along the street.

“Don’t you go turning all treehugger on me, Nicky,” Mike says. “If you chain yourself to a tree I ain’t coming down at three in the morning to feed you beer.”

“I think that’s your problem if you think beer’s what I’m gonna be wanting at three in the morning, Michael,” Nick says, and Mike laughs.

Linda has vanished from his side. He guesses she’s helping out John in the kitchen, because he can’t see her anywhere in the bar. His body feels strange, sluggish, moving far too slowly as he stands up to help Axel with a tray of empty cups and a steaming teapot. He feels as though he’s walked a thousand miles since yesterday. As though he’s lived a thousand days. It’s too early for winter, for the cold to come back. How long since he last saw Nick?

“I don’t remember,” he says aloud. No one looks at him. Perhaps they don’t hear.

He drinks the coffee in his hand. It tastes like nothing, like dust. The taste of his own mouth. Linda’s here again, but she’s wearing black, like the priest, a lace veil shrouding her face in shadow. She’s still got the bruise high on her cheekbone, plum-colored, even though it should have faded by now. Should have faded a long time ago.

No one’s talking about Nick, but he’s there, no doubt about it. He’s there as clearly as if he was sitting at the bar, beer-glass in hand, or leaning against the doorframe, or sitting across from Mike at the table, tracing the pale rings bleached into the wood. He’s in his usual flannel, red, maybe, or blue. When he looks up, his eyes are bright and gentle and there’s something soft about his mouth that’s so _Nick_ , so indescribably _him_ that Mike has to look down and away and take deep breaths in through his nose and clench his fists tight.

They had been doing so well. They had come such a long fucking way.

“God damn it, Nicky,” he says, to the insides of his eyelids. “We were supposed to have fucking made it.”

When he opens his eyes, the cabin is dark and Mike has _God Bless America_ on his lips and tears running down his face.

He finds Nick on the steps outside, sitting in the fragile darkness with his head upturned to the lightening sky. He doesn’t speak as Mike sits beside him, but continues to watch the distant mountains, his face serene and peaceful and alive.

They have a little time before the sun rises. A little time before the others wake up and start to move about. Mike leans in closer to Nick and rests his shoulder gently against his, and he feels Nick’s warmth through the thin fabric of his shirt, the steady movement of his breath. Perhaps, if he concentrates hard enough, he can feel the pulse, constant and sure, against his skin.

Nick leans in as well, and lets his arm rest against Mike’s. He doesn’t take his gaze off the horizon, but his touch is steady and warm. I’m here, it says. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

Mike sits in the darkness, with Nick at his side, and they wait for the sun.


End file.
